If you're an executive, designer, product manager, marketer, or engineer, communication is part of your work. Using images and text in unique ways, comics can engage readers in ways traditional methods can't. In See What I Mean, you'll learn how to create comics about your products and processes without an illustrator—just like Google, eBay, and Adobe do.

This book is a clear guide to help you mock up your ideas and concepts for better reaching to your colleagues or clients. You don't need to be a caricaturist to use drawing as a tool to explain what you really mean.

In this book the author guides you to a process of understanding the concepts of cartoon and how to apply this concepts in your advantage.The book is not intended to make the next Stan Lee out of you (although will not limit you), but instead to loose your fear to the pencil and help you use drawings as a way to put down your ideas and more easily share or discuss these ones."A picture says more than a thousand words" and once you start reading you will start seeing how this is so true.

In the first part of the book you will be gracefully guided through the drawing process, enough to what you will need.Then you will be introduced into the concepts of timing and environment and many other concepts of comics that will enable you to actually tell a full story in a very few frames.Later you will be explained how to plan story and to focus on what will impact and actually tell what needs to be told.Getting to the end of the book you will put things together and polish what you have being learning.

When you finish the book you will probably won't be able to just quick your job and get hired in DC Comics, but you will be enough prepared to tell your ideas or stories in a whole new way, using more visual and therefore more appealing way to reach your audience, adding a new tool to your toolbox.

This is great, gives heaps of good ideas as well as practical information. I used this to create and add cartoons to a powerpoint - would not have had the confidence to do this otherwise and it has made the ppt much more effective and interesting.

Interestingly I received this publication a few weeks before a presentation I was giving on use of Google technology. The moment I read the initial pages, it became clear how easy it is to plan my talk with comic graphics to illustrate my story. It took all of the stress out of trying sound smarter that I really am. ;)

The group enjoyed my talk and I am looking forward to giving my next presentation.

I've been interested in comics for many years, but I never thought I would (a) use comics for work, or (b) learn how to make them myself.

"See What I Mean" is an excellent introduction to making comics. It explains all the steps to make a comic, including how to draw, how to write a script, how to plan the panels, and basic of the comics language.

I was surprised at how easy it was to start drawing simple but pretty expressive characters, and how confident I feel now about being able to make simple comics to communicate ideas.

For me the bad side was that some of the later chapters, about computer programs you can use to help you write comics and such, were a bit disappointing. But it's ok, it just means that I'll use pens and/or generic drawing programs for that. I have other minor complains about the book, like sometimes the logic/arguments for certain things felt a bit weak, or the classification of certain things was a bit weird (eg. the properties of comics, in the second chapter).

In summary, this is an interesting book and an excellent primer if you are curious about the idea of using comics to communicate things at work (use cases, documenting certain processes, explaining product concepts, etc.).

I didn't like art classes. Every painting, drawing, etc. should have looked as real as possible. It doesn't matter. I have to admit I was curious about content of See What I Mean.

What's in the book?In first chapter author nicely introduces why comics can be useful tool in your work. Second chapter covers properties of comics and how to experiment with different parts of a comic to achieve particular effect. I really like approach from third chapter: "You Don't Need to Be an Artist". With author suggestions, I started doodling and doing exercises from book and it was fun Simple shapes, simple techniques and I can draw different emotions, silhouettes. Chapter 4-6 focuses on using comic to present product (example: Square credit card reader). After several steps your comic is ready. Chapter 7 shows some reference materials, software and online tools. In my spare time I'm going to check out How To Draw It further.

After reading it, I am positively surprised. There are lot of comics. Every chapter contains comics at the beginning — they gave first grasp what you read later in chapter. See What I Mean changed the way I thought about comics. It is approachable and powerful way to express ideas and it is worth to add to personal toolbox.